Ori
A wandering minstrel making his living as a bard of the Game, Ori carries with him the burden of a past marked out by betrayal and anger. Working in the shadows in service to whoever can afford his price, Ori is a bard through and through, and a an actor before anything else. Background As a child among his clan, Ori was known for his hot temper and rushed actions. He only ever calmed up when listening the tales of the Clan's Storyteller. He learnt the stories quickly and soon could recite all of them without fault, becoming something akin to the apprentice to the Storyteller. His hotheadedness and stubbornness got him into fights with other people in his clan and while he was cared by those close to him, he was also seen as a lot of trouble. He was often accused of acting as a child, despite of having earned his vallaslin, which in turn led him into doing rash stunts in his desperation to prove them wrong. It was one of these things that led Ori into trying to venture into the caverns near the place his clan had settled for a time. What he found there was not only moss and mushrooms, but an ancient elven tomb. And a horde of giant spiders that had made nest there. Unprepared, he was overwhelmed by the monstrous things and mortally wounded and would have surely died if not for a small group of adventures who happened to arrive just in time to safe the wounded elf. Close to death, right side of his face horribly torn and poisoned, Ori was taken away by the adventurers that slowly cared him back to health; sadly, they didn't know of his clan close by and when Ori finally was healed enough to speak other than fever-infected babbling, they had taken him back to the Orlais with them. Suspicious of the Shemlen by nature, Ori hardly talked to them at first, save from the stiff thanks for saving his life; he was forced to stay with them though, as his still healing face was needing constant attention and he was not in shape to travel. Finally turning to the only other elf on the group; a charming bard named Armel, Ori started to form vary friendship -first with the older elf and later on with the rest of the team. By the time they got back to the Val Royeaux, Ori had been taken in by the Armel as a apprentice and despite of the oddness of the human cities he found himself willing to stay with the black haired elf. The older man was charming and witty and when he expressed his desire to form more than a mere friendship or tutor-student relationship with Ori, the scarred elf hardly found himself objecting. Armel was a harsh teacher and passionate lover, and even if Ori knew the older Bard was hardly being faithful to him, he still stayed with the man, believing himself to be in love and for the other to feel the same as the black haired man always came back to his young apprentice in the end. That is, until Ori once heard Armel and one of his former companions arguing. The horrified dalish realized that the group had not been on the caverns by change, but in attempt to find some valuable elven artifact that they had believed to be there. He learnt that as they had not found it from there they had attacked the Dalish camping nearby, believing that they had it or at least knew of its location and as they claimed not to know anything they had killed as many as they could. He learnt that they had healed Ori in hopes that the elf would know of the artifact, and that Armel had been tasked to seduce him to get him to talk about it. Horrified and heartbroken, Ori followed the former companion on the streets, killing the man before returning to Armel and demanding the answer. At first his former teacher had denied everything, but when he heard that the other had confessed just before the furious Ori had killed him he tried to escape. Ori caught him, however, slightly surprised how easily he was able to defeat his former teacher. But as he was getting ready for the deathblow, Armel screamed that he had really fallen in love with the other, against all of the plans. Heartbroken, but unable to kill the man he had once loved, Ori instead blinded the man so that he could not follow him nor hunt him down and fled the city, starting a new life as a wandering minstrel. These days, besides of earning his living as a minstrel, Ori sells some of the interesting knowledge he gains on his travels; whispers, rumors, things in the shadows, to the people who might be interested. It should be known, though, that he saves the most interesting things he learns and hears for a man who calls himself Aurelian, working under the name of Lyrebird. Appearance Ori has a skin with color of burnt sugar, marked with darker brown tattoos running down his arms, sides of his chest and down to his thighs. His reddish mahogany colored hair is cut short on either side of his head, running in long strands reaching over his shoulders from his forehead to the back of his neck. He keeps his hair mostly swept to the right, covering the vivid scars over his eye and cheek. These scars run over his vallaslin, once a symbol of Sylaise; The Heartkeeper, but now little more than hints of design once tattooed there. His eyes are warm color of golden whisky, while the right one is oddly dull; it was affected by the scars and the poison and these days Ori only sees difference in light and faint colors with it, halving the sphere of his vision. The scars still burn, sometimes, reducing the elf into small bundle to the floor hurt by light and noises, even if thankfully the episodes have grown more rare with time. Ori dresses to impress. He knows that rolling up to some noble's party dressed in leather armor dried in blood and hair filled with hay is sure way to get kicked out. As well as he knows that dressing as some foppish noble will get his ass kicked in the tavern of the simple farmers. And so, he dresses right for the occasion, but always with a hint of interesting and exotic. He ''is ''a bard, after all; a living act. Personality Above all else, Ori is an actor. He wears layers and layers of masks, following his surroundings carefully to see what those around him expect to see and then becomes this. He can be witty and charming or mysterious and seductive, but there is a strike of temper in him that even the years have not managed to tame down, sometimes breaking through his masks, revealing his carefully hidden true self, even if just by the tiniest scale. This most often manifests as his incapability of listening bullshit from anyone, sparking up either with cutting remarks, or, if words fail him, one of his hidden blades. His natural taste for trouble has not been lessened by the years and perhaps that is why he still takes part in the petty Games of the nobility. He also takes slight sadistic pleasure in seeing people's fates in his hands because what he knows or what he "doesn't" know. Abilities Recent Events Relationships Redirect Main Page Site Backstory Category:Elves Category:Original Category:Rogue Category:Orlais